Tech Platform Helps Nextility Advocate for Small Business Energy Needs

Originally appeared on Energy Central.

Nextilty (www.nextility.com) was launched five years ago as a solar power company. With a $7 million expansion capital raise, a new branding campaign and smart new hires, Nextility is now rolling-out Nextility Power & Gas with the promise of helping small businesses find the best guaranteed rates without the usual hassle and risk associated with shopping for electricity and natural gas. Nextility is among the largest solar developers in Washington, DC with over 200 projects under its belt. The company now has over 50 employees and is currently hiring additional team members to offer business competitive pricing, managed risk and no hassle brokerage and energy sourcing. The company’s expansion started in September and now has six months of active client billing data and results.

“We started Power and Gas to become a more diversified company,” said Zach Axelrod, CEO and Founder. “The technology platform we created for renewables, providing sources for power and electricity at the lowest rates, could be used as a repeatable solution.”

The technology platform developed for the solar business was really the catalyst that drove new areas for Nextility to extend into and it’s approaching the market as a tech company. Nextilty built a technology platform that literally “takes apart” utility invoices, digitalizes the customer’s historical billing information and cross checks rates across the customer’s rate class from the top competitive suppliers in the industry to get the best pricing possible for electricity, natural gas and renewable energy.

Dan Sullivan is heading-up Power and Gas as general manager. He was previously Vice President of Marketing at Constellation Energy. An industry veteran who started in energy marketing in 2001, Sullivan was on the founding executive team of Suez Energy Resources, NA,

“The first thing we do for a new customer – when we look for possible savings – is Nextility works with 15 of the top competitive energy suppliers,” said Sullivan. “We get daily rates and see what the customer is paying on the bill. We look at applicable competitive rates from a market basket of suppliers. “If the customer is doing well already, we send them an email saying ‘you are doing great’ but the platform continues to shop for them until we can save them money. When we find a better rate for them, we let customers know when we can bring that bill down!” he said. “Analyzing the bill is fundamental to providing a better customer experience for folks. We can give customers information on rate classes, what would be projected savings, what they paid over the past 12 months,” he added.

“There is a lot of information we can derive from the customer bill which we routinely communicate to the customer in a friendly, easy-to-understand format.” “Through our automation tool, we gain access to their utility account so there is no work involved for the customer,” he said. “Nextilty follows a process to gain all the information we need to provide the best program.” No one knows where energy prices are going. Recently prices for natural gas have been at historically low levels which has also led to lower prices on electricity. Sullivan says ” I like to tell our customers that electricity is the most volatile commodity in the world and if you are not managing it properly you can get some really unpleasant surprises on your utility bill. It feels really good helping small businesses gain control over their bill by letting us take over the work for them.”

“It’s fun when everyone wins!”